phenomenon of will, the form of life or reality, is really only the
_present_, not the future nor the past. The latter are only in the
conception, exist only in the connection of knowledge, so far as it
follows the principle of sufficient reason. No man has ever lived in the
past, and none will live in the future; the _present_ alone is the form of
all life, and is its sure possession which can never be taken from it. The
present always exists, together with its content. Both remain fixed
without wavering, like the rainbow on the waterfall. For life is firm and
certain in the will, and the present is firm and certain in life.
Certainly, if we reflect on the thousands of years that are past, of the
millions of men who lived in them, we ask, What were they? what has become
of them? But, on the other hand, we need only recall our own past life and
renew its scenes vividly in our imagination, and then ask again, What was
all this? what has become of it? As it is with it, so is it with the life
of those millions. Or should we suppose that the past could receive a new
existence because it has been sealed by death? Our own past, the most
recent part of it, and even yesterday, is now no more than an empty dream
of the fancy, and such is the past of all those millions. What was? What
is? The will, of which life is the mirror, and knowledge free from will,
which beholds it clearly in that mirror. Whoever has not yet recognised
this, or will not recognise it, must add to the question asked above as to
the fate of past generations of men this question also: Why he, the
questioner, is so fortunate as to be conscious of this costly, fleeting,
and only real present, while those hundreds of generations of men, even
the heroes and philosophers of those ages, have sunk into the night of the
past, and have thus become nothing; but he, his insignificant ego,
actually exists? or more shortly, though somewhat strangely: Why this now,
his now, _is_ just now and _was_ not long ago? Since he asks such strange
questions, he regards his existence and his time as independent of each
other, and the former as projected into the latter. He assumes indeed two
nows—one which belongs to the object, the other which belongs to the
subject, and marvels at the happy accident of their coincidence. But in
truth, only the point of contact of the object, the form of which is time,
with the subject, which has no mode of the principle of sufficient reason
as its form, constitutes the present, as is shown in the essay on the
principle of sufficient reason. Now all object is the will so far as it
has become idea, and the subject is the necessary correlative of the
object. But real objects are only in the present; the past and the future
contain only conceptions and fancies, therefore the present is the
essential form of the phenomenon of the will, and inseparable from it. The
present alone is that which always exists and remains immovable. That
which, empirically apprehended, is the most transitory of all, presents
itself to the metaphysical vision, which sees beyond the forms of
empirical perception, as that which alone endures, the _nunc stans_ of the
schoolmen. The source and the supporter of its content is the will to live
or the thing-in-itself,—which we are. That which constantly becomes and
passes away, in that it has either already been or is still to be, belongs
to the phenomenon as such on account of its forms, which make coming into
being and passing away possible. Accordingly, we must think:—_Quid
fuit?_—_Quod est._ _Quid erit?_—_Quod fuit;_ and take it in the strict
meaning of the words; thus understand not _simile_ but _idem_. For life is
certain to the will, and the present is certain to life. Thus it is that
every one can say, “I am once for all lord of the present, and through all
eternity it will accompany me as my shadow: therefore I do not wonder
where it has come from, and how it happens that it is exactly now.” We
might compare time to a constantly revolving sphere; the half that was
always sinking would be the past, that which was always rising would be
the future; but the indivisible point at the top, where the tangent
touches, would be the extensionless present. As the tangent does not
revolve with the sphere, neither does the present, the point of contact of
the object, the form of which is time, with the subject, which has no
form, because it does not belong to the knowable, but is the condition of
all that is knowable. Or, time is like an unceasing stream, and the
present a rock on which the stream breaks itself, but does not carry away
with it. The will, as thing-in-itself, is just as little subordinate to
the principle of sufficient reason as the subject of knowledge, which,
finally, in a certain regard is the will itself or its expression. And as
life, its own phenomenon, is assured to the will, so is the present, the
single form of real life. Therefore we have not to investigate the past
before life, nor the future after death: we have rather to know the
_present_, the one form in which the will manifests itself.(65) It will
not escape from the will, but neither will the will escape from it. If,
therefore, life as it is satisfies, whoever affirms it in every way may
regard it with confidence as endless, and banish the fear of death as an
illusion that inspires him with the foolish dread that he can ever be
robbed of the present, and foreshadows a time in which there is no
present; an illusion with regard to time analogous to the illusion with
regard to space through which every one imagines the position on the globe
he happens to occupy as above, and all other places as below. In the same
way every one links the present to his own individuality, and imagines
that all present is extinguished with it; that then past and future might
be without a present. But as on the surface of the globe every place is
above, so the form of all life is the _present_, and to fear death because
it robs us of the present, is just as foolish as to fear that we may slip
down from the round globe upon which we have now the good fortune to
occupy the upper surface. The present is the form essential to the
objectification of the will. It cuts time, which extends infinitely in
both directions, as a mathematical point, and stands immovably fixed, like
an everlasting mid-day with no cool evening, as the actual sun burns
without intermission, while it only seems to sink into the bosom of night.
Therefore, if a man fears death as his annihilation, it is just as if he
were to think that the sun cries out at evening, “Woe is me! for I go down
into eternal night.”(66) And conversely, whoever is oppressed with the
burden of life, whoever desires life and affirms it, but abhors its
torments, and especially can no longer endure the hard lot that has fallen
to himself, such a man has no deliverance to hope for from death, and
cannot right himself by suicide. The cool shades of Orcus allure him only
with the false appearance of a haven of rest. The earth rolls from day
into night, the individual dies, but the sun itself shines without
intermission, an eternal noon. Life is assured to the will to live; the
form of life is an endless present, no matter how the individuals, the
phenomena of the Idea, arise and pass away in time, like fleeting dreams.
Thus even already suicide appears to us as a vain and therefore a foolish
action; when we have carried our investigation further it will appear to
us in a still less favourable light.
Dogmas change and our knowledge is deceptive; but Nature never errs, her
procedure is sure, and she never conceals it. Everything is entirely in
Nature, and Nature is entire in everything. She has her centre in every
brute. It has surely found its way into existence, and it will surely find
its way out of it. In the meantime it lives, fearless and without care, in
the presence of annihilation, supported by the consciousness that it is
Nature herself, and imperishable as she is. Man alone carries about with
him, in abstract conceptions, the certainty of his death; yet this can
only trouble him very rarely, when for a single moment some occasion calls
it up to his imagination. Against the mighty voice of Nature reflection
can do little. In man, as in the brute which does not think, the certainty
that springs from his inmost consciousness that he himself is Nature, the
world, predominates as a lasting frame of mind; and on account of this no
man is observably disturbed by the thought of certain and never-distant
death, but lives as if he would live for ever. Indeed this is carried so
far that we may say that no one has really a lively conviction of the
certainty of his death, otherwise there would be no great difference
between his frame of mind and that of a condemned criminal. Every one
recognises that certainty in the abstract and theoretically, but lays it
aside like other theoretical truths which are not applicable to practice,
without really receiving it into his living consciousness. Whoever
carefully considers this peculiarity of human character will see that the
psychological explanations of it, from habit and acquiescence in the
inevitable, are by no means sufficient, and that its true explanation lies
in the deeper ground we have given. The same fact explains the
circumstance that at all times and among all peoples dogmas of some kind
or other relating to the continued existence of the individual after death
arise, and are believed in, although the evidence in support of them must
always be very insufficient, and the evidence against them forcible and
varied. But, in truth, this really requires no proof, but is recognised by
the healthy understanding as a fact, and confirmed by the confidence that
Nature never lies any more than she errs, but openly exhibits and naïvely
expresses her action and her nature, while only we ourselves obscure it by
our folly, in order to establish what is agreeable to our limited point of
view.
But this that we have brought to clearest consciousness, that although the
particular phenomenon of the will has a temporal beginning and end, the
will itself as thing-in-itself is not affected by it, nor yet the
correlative of all object, the knowing but never known subject, and that
life is always assured to the will to live—this is not to be numbered with
the doctrines of immortality. For permanence has no more to do with the
will or with the pure subject of knowing, the eternal eye of the world,
than transitoriness, for both are predicates that are only valid in time,
and the will and the pure subject of knowing lie outside time. Therefore
the egoism of the individual (this particular phenomenon of will
enlightened by the subject of knowing) can extract as little nourishment
and consolation for his wish to endure through endless time from the view
we have expressed, as he could from the knowledge that after his death the
rest of the eternal world would continue to exist, which is just the
expression of the same view considered objectively, and therefore
temporally. For every individual is transitory only as phenomenon, but as
thing-in-itself is timeless, and therefore endless. But it is also only as
phenomenon that an individual is distinguished from the other things of
the world; as thing-in-itself he is the will which appears in all, and
death destroys the illusion which separates his consciousness from that of
the rest: this is immortality. His exemption from death, which belongs to
him only as thing-in-itself, is for the phenomenon one with the
immortality of the rest of the external world.(67) Hence also, it arises
that although the inward and merely felt consciousness of that which we
have raised to distinct knowledge is indeed, as we have said, sufficient
to prevent the thought of death from poisoning the life of the rational
being, because this consciousness is the basis of that love of life which
maintains everything living, and enables it to live on at ease as if there
were no such thing as death, so long as it is face to face with life, and
turns its attention to it, yet it will not prevent the individual from
being seized with the fear of death, and trying in every way to escape
from it, when it presents itself to him in some particular real case, or
even only in his imagination, and he is compelled to contemplate it. For
just as, so long as his knowledge was directed to life as such, he was
obliged to recognise immortality in it, so when death is brought before
his eyes, he is obliged to recognise it as that which it is, the temporal
end of the particular temporal phenomenon. What we fear in death is by no
means the pain, for it lies clearly on this side of death, and, moreover,
we often take refuge in death from pain, just as, on the contrary, we
sometimes endure the most fearful suffering merely to escape death for a
while, although it would be quick and easy. Thus we distinguish pain and
death as two entirely different evils. What we fear in death is the end of
the individual, which it openly professes itself to be, and since the
individual is a particular objectification of the will to live itself, its
whole nature struggles against death. Now when feeling thus exposes us
helpless, reason can yet step in and for the most part overcome its
adverse influence, for it places us upon a higher standpoint, from which
we no longer contemplate the particular but the whole. Therefore a
philosophical knowledge of the nature of the world, which extended to the
point we have now reached in this work but went no farther, could even at
this point of view overcome the terror of death in the measure in which
reflection had power over direct feeling in the given individual. A man
who had thoroughly assimilated the truths we have already advanced, but
had not come to know, either from his own experience or from a deeper
insight, that constant suffering is essential to life, who found
satisfaction and all that he wished in life, and could calmly and
deliberately desire that his life, as he had hitherto known it, should
endure for ever or repeat itself ever anew, and whose love of life was so
great that he willingly and gladly accepted all the hardships and miseries
to which it is exposed for the sake of its pleasures,—such a man would
stand “with firm-knit bones on the well-rounded, enduring earth,” and
would have nothing to fear. Armed with the knowledge we have given him, he
would await with indifference the death that hastens towards him on the
wings of time. He would regard it as a false illusion, an impotent
spectre, which frightens the weak but has no power over him who knows that
he is himself the will of which the whole world is the objectification or
copy, and that therefore he is always certain of life, and also of the
present, the peculiar and only form of the phenomenon of the will. He
could not be terrified by an endless past or future in which he would not
be, for this he would regard as the empty delusion of the web of Mâya.
Thus he would no more fear death than the sun fears the night. In the
“Bhagavad-Gita” Krishna thus raises the mind of his young pupil Arjuna,
when, seized with compunction at the sight of the arrayed hosts (somewhat
as Xerxes was), he loses heart and desires to give up the battle in order
to avert the death of so many thousands. Krishna leads him to this point
of view, and the death of those thousands can no longer restrain him; he
gives the sign for battle. This point of view is also expressed by
Goethe’s Prometheus, especially when he says—
“Here sit I, form mankind
In my own image,
A race like to myself,
To suffer and to weep,
Rejoice, enjoy,
And heed thee not,
As I.”
The philosophy of Bruno and that of Spinoza might also lead any one to
this point of view whose conviction was not shaken and weakened by their
errors and imperfections. That of Bruno has properly no ethical theory at
all, and the theory contained in the philosophy of Spinoza does not really
proceed from the inner nature of his doctrine, but is merely tacked on to
it by means of weak and palpable sophisms, though in itself it is
praiseworthy and beautiful. Finally, there are many men who would occupy
this point of view if their knowledge kept pace with their will, _i.e._,
if, free from all illusion, they were in a position to become clearly and
distinctly themselves. For this is, for knowledge, the point of view of
the complete _assertion of the will to live_.
That the will asserts itself means, that while in its objectivity, _i.e._,
in the world and life, its own nature is completely and distinctly given
it as idea, this knowledge does not by any means check its volition; but
this very life, so known, is willed as such by the will with knowledge,
consciously and deliberately, just as up to this point it willed it as
blind effort without knowledge. The opposite of this, the _denial of the
will to live_, shows itself if, when that knowledge is attained, volition
ends, because the particular known phenomena no longer act as _motives_
for willing, but the whole knowledge of the nature of the world, the
mirror of the will, which has grown up through the comprehension of the
_Ideas_, becomes a _quieter_ of the will; and thus free, the will
suppresses itself. These quite unfamiliar conceptions are difficult to
understand when expressed in this general way, but it is hoped they will
become clear through the exposition we shall give presently, with special
reference to action, of the phenomena in which, on the one hand, the
assertion in its different grades, and, on the other hand, the denial,
expresses itself. For both proceed from knowledge, yet not from abstract
knowledge, which is expressed in words, but from living knowledge, which
is expressed in action and behaviour alone, and is independent of the
dogmas which at the same time occupy the reason as abstract knowledge. To
exhibit them both, and bring them to distinct knowledge of the reason, can
alone be my aim, and not to prescribe or recommend the one or the other,
which would be as foolish as it would be useless; for the will in itself
is absolutely free and entirely self-determining, and for it there is no
law. But before we go on to the exposition referred to, we must first
explain and more exactly define this _freedom_ and its relation to
necessity. And also, with regard to the life, the assertion and denial of
which is our problem, we must insert a few general remarks connected with
the will and its objects. Through all this we shall facilitate the
apprehension of the inmost nature of the knowledge we are aiming at, of
the ethical significance of methods of action.
Since, as has been said, this whole work is only the unfolding of a single
thought, it follows that all its parts have the most intimate connection
with each other. Not merely that each part stands in a necessary relation
to what immediately precedes it, and only presupposes a recollection of
that by the reader, as is the case with all philosophies which consist
merely of a series of inferences, but that every part of the whole work is
related to every other part and presupposes it. It is, therefore,
necessary that the reader should remember not only what has just been
said, but all the earlier parts of the work, so that he may be able to
connect them with what he is reading, however much may have intervened.
Plato also makes this demand upon his readers through the intricate
digressions of his dialogues, in which he only returns to the leading
thought after long episodes, which illustrate and explain it. In our case
this demand is necessary; for the breaking up of our one single thought
into its many aspects is indeed the only means of imparting it, though not
essential to the thought itself, but merely an artificial form. The
division of four principal points of view into four books, and the most
careful bringing together of all that is related and homogeneous, assists
the exposition and its comprehension; yet the material absolutely does not
admit of an advance in a straight line, such as the progress of history,
but necessitates a more complicated exposition. This again makes a
repeated study of the book necessary, for thus alone does the connection
of all the parts with each other become distinct, and only then do they
all mutually throw light upon each other and become quite clear.(68)
§ 55. That the will as such is _free_, follows from the fact that,
according to our view, it is the thing-in-itself, the content of all
phenomena. The phenomena, on the other hand, we recognise as absolutely
subordinate to the principle of sufficient reason in its four forms. And
since we know that necessity is throughout identical with following from
given grounds, and that these are convertible conceptions, all that
belongs to the phenomenon, _i.e._, all that is object for the knowing
subject as individual, is in one aspect reason, and in another aspect
consequent; and in this last capacity is determined with absolute
necessity, and can, therefore, in no respect be other than it is. The
whole content of Nature, the collective sum of its phenomena, is thus
throughout necessary, and the necessity of every part, of every
phenomenon, of every event, can always be proved, because it must be
possible to find the reason from which it follows as a consequent. This
admits of no exception: it follows from the unrestricted validity of the
principle of sufficient reason. In another aspect, however, the same world
is for us, in all its phenomena, objectivity of will. And the will, since
it is not phenomenon, is not idea or object, but thing-in-itself, and is
not subordinate to the principle of sufficient reason, the form of all
object; thus is not determined as a consequent through any reason, knows
no necessity, _i.e._, is _free_. The concept of freedom is thus properly a
negative concept, for its content is merely the denial of necessity,
_i.e._, the relation of consequent to its reason, according to the
principle of sufficient reason. Now here lies before us in its most
distinct form the solution of that great contradiction, the union of
freedom with necessity, which has so often been discussed in recent times,
yet, so far as I know, never clearly and adequately. Everything is as
phenomenon, as object, absolutely necessary: _in itself_ it is will, which
is perfectly free to all eternity. The phenomenon, the object, is
necessarily and unalterably determined in that chain of causes and effects
which admits of no interruption. But the existence in general of this
object, and its specific nature, _i.e._, the Idea which reveals itself in
it, or, in other words, its character, is a direct manifestation of will.
Thus, in conformity with the freedom of this will, the object might not be
at all, or it might be originally and essentially something quite
different from what it is, in which case, however, the whole chain of
which it is a link, and which is itself a manifestation of the same will,
would be quite different also. But once there and existing, it has entered
the chain of causes and effects, is always necessarily determined in it,
and can, therefore, neither become something else, _i.e._, change itself,
nor yet escape from the chain, _i.e._, vanish. Man, like every other part
of Nature, is objectivity of the will; therefore all that has been said
holds good of him. As everything in Nature has its forces and qualities,
which react in a definite way when definitely affected, and constitute its
character, man also has his _character_, from which the motives call forth
his actions with necessity. In this manner of conduct his empirical
character reveals itself, but in this again his intelligible character,
the will in itself, whose determined phenomenon he is. But man is the most
complete phenomenon of will, and, as we explained in the Second Book, he
had to be enlightened with so high a degree of knowledge in order to
maintain himself in existence, that in it a perfectly adequate copy or
repetition of the nature of the world under the form of the idea became
possible: this is the comprehension of the Ideas, the pure mirror of the
world, as we learnt in the Third Book. Thus in man the will can attain to
full self-consciousness, to distinct and exhaustive knowledge of its own
nature, as it mirrors itself in the whole world. We saw in the preceding
book that art springs from the actual presence of this degree of
knowledge; and at the end of our whole work it will further appear that,
through the same knowledge, in that the will relates it to itself, a
suppression and self-denial of the will in its most perfect manifestation
is possible. So that the freedom which otherwise, as belonging to the
thing-in-itself, can never show itself in the phenomenon, in such a case
does also appear in it, and, by abolishing the nature which lies at the
foundation of the phenomenon, while the latter itself still continues to
exist in time, it brings about a contradiction of the phenomenon with
itself, and in this way exhibits the phenomena of holiness and
self-renunciation. But all this can only be fully understood at the end of
this book. What has just been said merely affords a preliminary and
general indication of how man is distinguished from all the other
phenomena of will by the fact that freedom, _i.e._, independence of the
principle of sufficient reason, which only belongs to the will as
thing-in-itself, and contradicts the phenomenon, may yet possibly, in his
case, appear in the phenomenon also, where, however, it necessarily
exhibits itself as a contradiction of the phenomenon with itself. In this
sense, not only the will in itself, but man also may certainly be called
free, and thus distinguished from all other beings. But how this is to be
understood can only become clear through all that is to follow, and for
the present we must turn away from it altogether. For, in the first place,
we must beware of the error that the action of the individual definite man
is subject to no necessity, _i.e._, that the power of the motive is less
certain than the power of the cause, or the following of the conclusion
from the premises. The freedom of the will as thing-in-itself, if, as has
been said, we abstract from the entirely exceptional case mentioned above,
by no means extends directly to its phenomenon, not even in the case in
which this reaches the highest made of its visibility, and thus does not
extend to the rational animal endowed with individual character, _i.e._,
the person. The person is never free although he is the phenomenon of a
free will; for he is already the determined phenomenon of the free
volition of this will, and, because he enters the form of every object,
the principle of sufficient reason, he develops indeed the unity of that
will in a multiplicity of actions, but on account of the timeless unity of
that volition in itself, this multiplicity exhibits in itself the regular
conformity to law of a force of Nature. Since, however, it is that free
volition that becomes visible in the person and the whole of his conduct,
relating itself to him as the concept to the definition, every individual
action of the person is to be ascribed to the free will, and directly
proclaims itself as such in consciousness. Therefore, as was said in the
Second Book, every one regards himself _a priori_ (_i.e._, here in this
original feeling) as free in his individual actions, in the sense that in
every given case every action is possible for him, and he only recognises
_a posteriori_ from experience and reflection upon experience that his
actions take place with absolute necessity from the coincidence of his
character with his motives. Hence it arises that every uncultured man,
following his feeling, ardently defends complete freedom in particular
actions, while the great thinkers of all ages, and indeed the more
profound systems of religion, have denied it. But whoever has come to see
clearly that the whole nature of man is will, and he himself only a
phenomenon of this will, and that such a phenomenon has, even from the
subject itself, the principle of sufficient reason as its necessary form,
which here appears as the law of motivation,—such a man will regard it as
just as absurd to doubt the inevitable nature of an action when the motive
is presented to a given character, as to doubt that the three angles of
any triangle are together equal to two right angles. Priestley has very
sufficiently proved the necessity of the individual action in his
“Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity;” but Kant, whose merit in this
respect is specially great, first proved the coexistence of this necessity
with the freedom of the will in itself, _i.e._, apart from the
phenomenon,(69) by establishing the distinction between the intelligible
and the empirical character. I entirely adhere to this distinction, for
the former is the will as thing-in-itself so far as it appears in a
definite individual in a definite grade, and the latter is this phenomenon
itself as it exhibits itself in time in the mode of action, and in space
in the physical structure. In order to make the relation of the two
comprehensible, the best expression is that which I have already used in
the introductory essay, that the intelligible character of every man is to
be regarded as an act of will outside time, and therefore indivisible and
unchangeable, and the manifestation of this act of will developed and
broken up in time and space and all the forms of the principle of
sufficient reason is the empirical character as it exhibits itself for
experience in the whole conduct and life of this man. As the whole tree is
only the constantly repeated manifestation of one and the same tendency,
which exhibits itself in its simplest form in the fibre, and recurs and is
easily recognised in the construction of the leaf, shoot, branch, and
trunk, so all a man’s deeds are merely the constantly repeated expression,
somewhat varied in form, of his intelligible character, and the induction
based on the sum of all these expressions gives us his empirical
character. For the rest, I shall not at this point repeat in my own words
Kant’s masterly exposition, but presuppose it as known.
In the year 1840 I dealt with the important chapter on the freedom of the
will, thoroughly and in detail, in my crowned prize-essay upon the
subject, and exposed the reason of the delusion which led men to imagine
that they found an empirically given absolute freedom of the will, that is
to say, a _liberum arbitrium indifferentiæ_, as a fact in
self-consciousness; for the question propounded for the essay was with
great insight directed to this point. Therefore, as I refer the reader to
that work, and also to the tenth paragraph of the prize-essay on the basis
of morals, which was published along with it under the title “The Two
Fundamental Problems of Ethics,” I now omit the incomplete exposition of
the necessity of the act of will, which was given at this place in the
first edition. Instead of it I shall explain the delusion mentioned above
in a brief discussion which is presupposed in the nineteenth chapter of
the supplement to the present work, and therefore could not be given in
the prize-essay referred to.